1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a saddle which is mounted on a printing drum for receipt thereon of a flexible printing plate on which indicia to be printed is formed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the printing industry, it has been common practice to employ a large number of rotary printing presses having rotary printing cylinders which have semicylindrical saddle shells mounted on the opposite sides thereof for receiving respective relatively thin photo-engraved plates on which the material to be printed has been formed. The many different arrangements have been proposed for removably mounting such printing plates on the saddles in a rapid and efficient manner. One such arrangement contemplates providing mounting pegs along one side of the saddle for receipt thereover of bores formed in one end of the printing plate and then providing a biasing bar along the opposite side of such saddle which is biased outwardly away from the saddle. Such biasing bar also employs pegs over which bores formed in the opposite end of the printing plate may be received to then enable such biasing bars to be retracted so the printing plate may be mounted on one end on the saddle and on the opposite end on such bar and the bar then released to bias the plate to a tensioned condition about the saddle. This arrangement suffers the shortcoming that mounting of the printing plate on the saddle is relatively difficult and time consuming, requiring the drum to be advanced three different times during mounting of the printing plate and four different times for dismounting thereof.
Various devices have been proposed for locking such biasing bar in a retracted position during mounting and dismounting of the printing plate to thus expedite such mounting and dismounting procedure. A device of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,696,744. However, all such locks known to applicant suffer the shortcoming that they are constructed of several different components which require individual assembly in the saddle and bar, thus consuming considerable time and rendering the saddle itself prohibitively expensive to manufacture.